Let common sense and truth guide you in life.

Why the Grinch took the Christ out of Christmas.

Every year I feel compelled to do a “Grinch” post. I don’t have anything against Christmas as a Holiday. While I don’t get paid if I don’t work, I still welcome the three weeks away from teenage chaos. However, I do object to the greedy and intrusive nature of Christmas.

Maybe it’s just me, but I turn on the TV and see greed in every shape and form. There are Americans against helping less fortunate fellow Americans by denying them the basic right of health care. Yet others that scorn the unions fighting for the rights of workers who have been financially abused by the bosses they trust. The lamentation of some Americans regarding the Twinkie while blaming workers and unions for the downfall of Hostess is a good example.

If those Twinkie junkie Americans would bother to read or listen to the facts instead of spending their life watching the fraudulently villainous Fox News, they would know that it was the CEO’s and their obsession with million dollar bonuses on top of their over $150K a month salaries that were the real culprits. In the meantime, they were sucking the financial life out of the workers.

Yet I digress. The overrepresentation of American greed can be found in the Christmas season.

It begins before Thanksgiving in the Christmas commercials that repeat themselves ad nauseam till Americans are either hypnotized into spending their hard earned cash or feel the need to commit holiday suicide.

The real greedy insanity happens the day after Thanksgiving with Black Friday. People line up in front of a store hours before it opens. Some people even camp out in front of a store days before. I saw the proof myself when I went to a small shopping corner for shoes and saw people with three big tents camping in front of Best Buy.

Why do something so pathologically deranged as to camp in front of a store just to get stuff for less money?

Greed in themselves and their children. It starts in August when the children start to “hint” at the things they want. Usually, they’ll want the things their friends have or what their friends say they’re going to get. It isn’t because they’re going to play those said items till they break (they might get a month of use). For children, things are a status symbol. If they’re the first to have it, then they’re “cool.”

Hence, the parents risk an overnight hospital stay for something as shallowly idiotic as greed. Most of the time they don’t even get a thank you on Christmas Day when the presents are opened.

If being drowned in consumerism during this time of year isn’t bad enough, I have to deal with a religious resurgence. This is the real reason why I’m doing yet another “Grinch” post.

During the 2012 Presidential Election, while I was being repeatedly insulted by Republicans because of my gender, intelligence, and income bracket, I was forced to listen to the Bible bangers telling me how their way was the only way. After the election, I thought all that was behind me for a while.

Then I hear, “We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ this time of year. By not calling it the Christmas Holidays, people are taking the Christ out of Christmas”…or some such nonsense.

That is exactly what we are doing. Calling this time of year the Holidays instead of Christmas, we are taking Christ out of Christmas. More to the point, we’re attempting to take any religious identification out of the Holidays.

People migrated to American to practice their religion. Yes, I will admit that they came here for religious freedom. That means all religions including the religions that don’t believe in Jesus, God, or that the world was created in seven days.

America should be a haven for all religions no matter what work of fictitious nonsense they believe in. It should also be a haven for atheists and science. Religious freedom should include those who don’t believe in religion and those who believe in scientific fact.

Using “Christmas” to describe the brief three week stint in December, is excluding most religions except Christianity. It also shows a level of favoritism to those religions that exalt in the mythology that an all powerful Jesus Christ existed. America, a nation diverse in race and religion (or non-religion), should never show favoritism to one race or religion. Doing so would negate everything America stands for.

Besides that, I’m sure not many Christians, Catholics, whatever entertained the thought that Christmas, the cross, and their beliefs might be offensive to others.

I believe in celebrating the Yule. To me, that’s the celebration of death and rebirth. I do not believe that December hallmarks the birth of an above average guy. Christians decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus around Yule to better integrate pagans into the Christian faith, which is why I find the word “Christmas” objectionable.

Hence, if Jesus was a real person, his birthday was definitely not in December. Some scholars believe that it was in April. Since Christ’s birthday isn’t in December anyway, Christians shouldn’t put up a fuss when we stop calling the Holiday Season “Christmas.”

There is an abundance of crosses this time of year. Christians put them everywhere. Yet, what they fail to realize, or what they blatantly ignore, is symbolism is all about perspective. To most closed-minded Christians, the cross is a sign of their faith. As such, it is permissible for them to wear crosses and display crosses. Perhaps it gives them a sign of comfort and they don’t realize that it’s also commercialism for their faith.

A cross can mean something entirely different to nonChristians. For me, it’s a sign of torture and death. Historically, crosses were used to string people up and leave them to dehydrate, starve, and cook under the sun until dead.

That’s not the worst of it. Even if it isn’t December, walk into a Catholic church and you’ll see a man hanging on the cross forever in torturous effigy. When I was a Catholic, it was hard enough to stand, sit, and kneel every weekend. Having to see that blatant display of torture was incomprehensible. For a fictitious God to considered us good people, we should be tortured?

Apart from the gruesome representation, the cross means other things to those of different beliefs or non-beliefs. They might feel excluded when they see a huge cross in front of town hall. Nothing says welcome like an exclusive symbol sitting on city property.

Yet, I can’t be entirely hateful. Usually, I’m forced to tolerate such things. I know that their main purpose is a display of superiority over those who aren’t Christian. It’s a way to exclude and shame those who don’t believe in the Christian faith. While I do find the term “Christmas” and symbolic cross offensive, there are moments when I can tolerate Christianity.

It’s all about intent, the type of energy – positive or negative – the person puts behind their faith.

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. There was a bell ringer by the door and I stopped to put a dollar into the pot. He smiled and told me “God bless you.”

Sometimes when someone says that to me, I feel something negative behind it like the person is saying it selfishly. Maybe they believe that there’s a quota they have to meet in saying “God bless you” to others to receive a divine reward from their God.

Yet, when that bell ringer said it to me as I donated a dollar, I only felt positivity and warmth. There are few cases where a person’s faith is the only way they know how to sincerely wish others well.

From me to my readers, I wish you all health, wealth, and happiness this Holiday Season.